Latest news with #ThaiFood
Telegraph
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Elaine Paige: ‘I enjoy a good play – perhaps more than a musical'
How do famous names spend their precious downtime? In our weekly My Saturday column, celebrities reveal their weekend virtues and vices. This week: Elaine Paige 9am I'm not a morning person. I'm slow to get up, I don't go zinging into the day. I laze in bed and say: 'Alexa, please play Radio 4.' I love the stories of the guests on Saturday Live. 10am I go to the kitchen and make a cup of PG Tips, then I shower and put my face on, do my hair. My mother was a milliner and always terribly well dressed, she'd never leave the house without a hat. I saw that every day as a child and it's something I've inherited. I like to feel well presented, I'm not ready if I don't have my mascara on. People don't take care of how they dress like we used to in the old days, but it's respectful to other people to make an effort. 12pm I go over to the King's Road, something I've done since the '60s when I was a bit of a hippie, though now I mostly do my weekend food shop there. If I'm having friends over, I make Thai food. I'm a big lover of a wonderful soup, especially tom yum goong, a hot sweet and sour soup. I love to cook. I'm not performing every day any more so I've been able to indulge myself in all these wonderful things I never had time for before. 3pm A game of doubles with friends at The Queen's Club in Kensington. I wanted to be a tennis player as a child, but I was told I was too short. The taller ladies have a wider reach, but I'm quite quick because I'm nearer the ground. I can keep a rally going and the joy is the challenge of improving, rather than whether I win or not – having said that, I am quite competitive. 5pm I've been in the business for so long, out every night of the week and two shows on a Saturday so, now I'm not performing, I like a lazy time at home. It's hard to believe it's been 60 years since I started and I was very flattered that the BBC put together a tribute concert for me, it's a lovely way to look back [ Elaine Paige: 60 Years in Showbusiness and Zoe Ball meets Elaine Paige are on BBC Sounds now; Elaine Paige: 60 Years on Stage is on BBC Four and iPlayer on 11 May]. Getting the role of Evita was major [Paige starred in the first production of the musical in 1978]. The whole thing was a whirlwind and hit me like a ton of bricks. I can remember as clearly as if it happened yesterday, the final audition at Andrew Lloyd Webber 's apartment. He asked me to sing Rainbow High three times. I said, 'Is there something I'm doing wrong?' and he said, 'No, no, it's just this one separates the men from the boys' – at the time, it was the most challenging aria he'd written. 7pm I don't like crowds, so I don't always go to the theatre on a Saturday, but I do go nearly every week, I can't live without it. I recently saw Oedipus with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, which was marvellous, and Giant at The Royal Court with John Lithgow as Roald Dahl and Elliot Levey as the agent. That was wonderful. Rather interestingly, I enjoy a good play, perhaps more than a musical. 10pm I love Yellowstone. When it first came out, I couldn't watch because I didn't understand a word anybody was saying as I'm slightly deaf and they're talking in this cowboy accent, but then – this sounds totally ageing – I discovered the subtitles. When I was young in Barnet, I'd go to the pictures on Saturday with my sister and it was always a Western, so it takes me back. 11pm I read Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion by Peter Ackroyd in bed. It's an absolute tome of a book, so I can only get through a chapter, but it's fascinating, you see that so much of his work came from his own life. I don't turn the light out until after midnight, it's all the years of going to bed so late. I'm a bit of an insomniac. I was awake at 4am this morning.
South China Morning Post
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Stop trying to elevate my food. It doesn't need it and it's condescending to some cuisines
Kowloon City is back in vogue. With Hong Kong's new Kai Tak arena within walking distance – OK, it is a long walk – and last year's popular film Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In romanticising the area's legendary former slum, you might say the old district is new again. Advertisement I live near Kowloon City, and what I go there for is Thai food. There is a cluster of authentic Thai restaurants and shops, operated by a vibrant community that has made the neighbourhood its own. Best of all, an amazing plate of pad Thai or basil beef rice lunch only costs about HK$50 (US$6.50). Afterwards, I can shop for Southeast Asian spices and ingredients, and even take home a mango sticky rice dessert as good as any from Bangkok's Chatuchak Weekend Market Participants spray water during the Songkran festival at South Wall Road in Kowloon City in 2025. South Wall Road is essentially Little Bangkok now. Photo: May Tse This is why I am never all that enthusiastic when my Central-dwelling friends on Hong Kong Island suggest getting Thai in their neighbourhood. Sometimes I will make an alternative proposal for them to come over to my neck of the woods. Usually, there will be some hesitancy and excuses, like, 'Oh, I'm not sure how to take the MTR there.' Advertisement Alas, it is hard to convince certain Hongkongers to trek over to deep, dark Kowloon. Worse, when they Google search the places I suggest, the restaurants look like dives. The pictures have bad lighting, minimal decor and no-frills food presentation.
